She smiled. Beamed. “How is he? Does he look well?”
“He gave me something for you.” He wondered if it hurt, her face beat up like that and smiling so much.
A crooked trident of chain lightning connected the snowy forest to the Armageddon clouds. Thunder ricocheted off the boulders. Dazzle. Witchery. The snow was a frenzy of drunken killer bees.
“Thunder snow,” yelled Caren happily.
Magic.
“Yes.” Tom floated. Maybe the boulder pulsed red beneath them.
Act.
For the first time in his life, he experienced the electric current of perfectly merged thought and action. Rockets ignited in his arms. Fired into his hands. He extended his arms stiffly, almost ceremonially, and felt the jolt of her sternum under his palms. Wide-eyed, in total surprise, Caren flew backward. For a second, her shoes slithered for purchase on the lip of rock. No blood, no struggle, no mess. Almost an accident.
Her jacketed arms protested in manic circles. Her feet pumped in a desperate uphill sprint through midair. The eerie scream ended abruptly when she was sucked out of sight in the blowing snow and the wind, into the foaming pit.
Holy shit! “I did it,” crowed Tom James.
Time spun its wheels, grinding adrenal sparks that wove him a hot new skin. His right fist extended over his head.
He half expected more waves of thunder and lightning.
Huh?
She was still screaming? Over the sound of the wind and the water. Tom felt the surge of new survival instincts. He turned. And hey-it wasn’t her screaming…
Through chattering fevers of snow he saw Keith Angland, overcoat flapping, sprinting down the trail. A berserker’s rage quavered from his hideously open mouth.
Angland’s powerful quarterback’s right arm shot out and threw sparkles from a black pistol. Particles of granite spattered Tom, beads of blood bloomed on his right wrist, stinging through his glove.
A fast zipper of wet, red hurt slit the trouser along his left calf. He growled, amazed, baptized and born again in a fiery Jordan of pain.
Common sense jerked him. He ran like hell.
Instead of chasing him, Angland went to the spot where Caren had stood on the snow-swept boulder. Tom watched, panting, from the trees and waited to see if Keith would continue the chase. He took off his gloves, pressed them against the wet rip in his trouser leg.
Angland scrambled out of sight, down into the ice-girded rock face around the pothole. Tom was paralyzed with doubt.
What if she hadn’t gone in? Was down there, and Keith was going to her.
No, no. He’d seen her disappear.
After a full minute, when Keith didn’t reappear, he shook off the shock and staggered through the stunted pines, marveling at the brilliant, delicate red stipple of his own blood on the fresh new snow. Smeared on his bare hands. Thinking clearer now. Being shot would make it more believable. Still had the magic going for him. He circled back around the falls, emerged from the pines and started back down the trail, lurching alongside Keith’s faint filling-in shoe prints. It was time to do some reporting.
He took out the cell phone and called 911. Nothing happened. Get higher on the ridge. Ignoring the pain in his leg, he scrambled up the slope, slipping and falling, crawling on all fours. Finally he stood above it all, under the furious sky. He called again. A voice answered. “Help!” he screamed.
“He killed her. He pushed her in. He shot me.”
“Where are you, if you’re calling cellular I can’t track you,”
the urgent controlled voice said back.
“In the woods. In the woods.” Despite the throbbing pain, Tom covered his mouth with his shaking hand to keep from laughing. In the woods. What a great 911 one-liner in northern Minnesota.
“Where in the woods?” yelled the voice.
Tom James collapsed in the snow and realized he couldn’t remember the name of the river rushing in the gorge below him. The clerk had said…
“Sir. Sir…” squawked the telephone in his bloody hand.
“There’s a waterfall up a trail from the highway,” he blurted.
“What waterfall is that?” The operator came back.
For the first time, Tom registered the reality of the wound in his leg. His own blood was leaking from his body. The new, hot, runny adrenaline garment he’d discovered deserted him in the cold wind. A hydraulic press squeezed his lungs.
Shock. He began to shake. Then, like a miracle, he saw two tiny police officers below him, running in the snow, coming up the lower trail.
“I see them,” he yelled into the phone.
One carried a long gun in both hands, swinging in front.
He disconnected 911. With great concentration, he pulled out his wallet. His numb wet fingers fumbled among the business cards. He found the one he wanted, stabbed the number in the phone, and as it rang he laughed, giddy. It was perfect after all.
“FBI,” said the cool omnipotent voice from faraway, inside a marble air conditioner.
“It’s Tom James,” he gasped. “Angland killed her. He shot me. Where’s Garrison.” Tom heard them tipping over chairs.
Yelling.
“Wait one,” shouted the agent in a controlled voice. “I have to patch you through. He’s in Duluth.”
Time plodded. Tom watched the cops climb. Maybe a minute. C’mon. C’mon.
Garrison’s voice was on the line. “Right here, Tom. Tell me exactly what happened and where you are.”
“There’s cops coming. I think I’m all right.”
“Who shot you?”
“Angland. He went crazy. Wait, uh, get ahold of the sheriff’s department in Grand Marais…” Tom could hear background commands.
Garrison said, “Tell me where you’re hit.”
“Leg. Below the knee.”
“Is the blood seeping or pumping?”
“No, no, don’t worry. Not that bad. Not that. Look we gotta…” Tom swooned and woke up a second later coughing snow.
“Steady,” said Garrison.
“I’m good. There’s cops. Hey. The tape?”
“The one Angland’s wife made?”
“Right. Listen, we gotta make a trade. Got her killed. It’s not safe for me.”
Garrison talked to somebody, then he came back up. His voice had changed. Closer somehow. Real focused. “We’re in contact with the sheriff’s department in Grand Marais.
Angland assaulted the county sheriff. They say they have a deputy and a state patrolman climbing some trail looking for you and Angland’s wife. They saw the cars and talked to a motel clerk. Wait. They say they heard shots.”
“That’s me, that’s me.” Tom vigorously nodded his head.
“Where’s Angland, Tom? I can patch it through and alert the officers. He’s up there armed, right?”
“Pushed his wife. Went down into this waterfall thing.
He’s not up here now. I think it’s safe.” The two cops were about two hundred yards below him. Tom heaved to his knees and waved.
Garrison was off the line for a moment. Then back. “The cops see somebody above them. A tan parka. If it’s you, wave one hand slowly.”
Tom grinned, raised his right hand with the phone and slowly swung it back and forth. Beauty queen wave.
“Okay,” said Garrison. “They have you. Hang on.”
“I want a trade,” insisted Tom. “I just saw him kill his wife, man. They’ll get me if I give you that tape.” Tom’s voice rose hysterically, a quavering shout that tumbled, echoing against the snow-draped pines. The cops below him reacted, crouched. One of them raised the shotgun.
“Easy, easy,” said Garrison. “We can protect you.”
“Bullshit, you can protect me. This is big. I want to go away. I want a deal.”
There was a moment of silence. “He wants the Program,”
stated Garrison, as if he were inspecting the thought coming from his lips. Words were exchanged in the FBI office far away. Garrison said carefully, “If what you have is good, it can be arranged.”
“No, no. I want it all spelled out. In writing and notarized.